About the site: This blog started as a place to house poems, favorites and original poems. Towards the end of ModPo 1, I added a blogroll of blogs showcasing poetic works by ModPo students and friends. Now, at the end of ModPo 2, we continue this tradition. We hope it provides a useful place for repose, reflection and reading. Hope you enjoy your visit here and look forward to seeing you again. New poems, links and blogs are constantly being added and updated.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Not they who soar, but they who plod
Their rugged way unhelped to God
Are heroes, they who higher fare
And flying fan the upper air
Miss all the toil that hugs the sod.
'Tis they whose backs have felt the rod,
Whose souls to sorrow have been bare,
Can smile upon defeated care,
Not they who soar.

High up there are no thorns to prod
Nor boulders hiding 'neath the clod
To him the keenness of the share,
For flight is ever free and rare--
But heroes they, the soil who've trod
Not they who soar.

II

'Twixt smile and tear so wags the world--
Today on happy pinions whirled,
We tempt the blue and spirit--gay
We neighbor with the stars--today
We seek the heavens planet-pearled.

And then in eddies swiftly swirled--
Poor straws upon the current twirled,
We cling, and lose and wage the fray;
Not where we will, but where we may
We lodge, on some far shore wave hurled.
'Twixt smile and fear.